Category Archives: Commentary
Action Day a resounding success!
WOW everyone, great job!! Thanks so much for supporting the 22 local and regional tenant advice services statewide and the Tenants’ Union of Queensland with your calls to reinstate the Program.
It sounds like there were plenty of calls, both the Premier and the Housing Minister. A few people reported not being able to get through at times so had to call back later.
In Brisbane about 80 people turned up to hand in postcards to the Premier’s electorate office. The crowd was loud, proud and polite! We’ll get some video of it up soon. Continue reading
Double whammy for tenants as RTA withdraws forms
Tenancy forms are used for a number of reasons including – to inform the other party of a breach of the agreement, to dispute the other party’s alleged breach or to claim a bond back – and are currently available from all Post Offices. Continue reading
Minister admits bolstering central government agency at expense of front line
In an interview about funding cuts to the Logan service, Housing Minister Flegg has acknowledged the Residential Tenancies Authority (RTA) will increase in size as a result of his decision to discontinue funding to the Tenant Advice and Advocacy Service program (TAAS).
The RTA is a centralised government agency, unlike the 23 community based, regional and urban advice services which will close as a result of the Minister’s decision. Such a decision seems contrary to the government’s own stated aim of retaining front line services and bolstering the regions.
The withdrawal of funds to the TAAS program will leave the 500,000 Queensland households who rent without a specialist, tenant focused service.
The decision is extraordinary because much of the work of these services is assisting renters in the private rental market to retain their housing. This work reduces the incidents of homelessness and subsequently the demand for social housing. The fact that the lion’s share of the program funding is money generated on tenants’ bonds is another aspect of the decision which makes it unreasonable and unfair.
TAAS Cuts! Funding! Action! Address to UnCut Rally Brisbane by TUQ
At the UnCut Rally in Brisbane on August 28th in Brisbane the TUQ Coordinator Penny Carr explained the issues concerning the cuts to funding and calls for action to reinstate.
TUQ Coordinator Penny Carr addresses Uncut rally – Brisbane Aug 23 2012.
UnCut Rally Brisbane – TUQ Coordinator explains the Qld Government's withdrawal of funding of the Tenant Advice and Advocacy Services, a long standing service funded from the interest on tenants' bond monies.
Funding cuts – a heartfelt view from a management committee
Geoff Smiley, Chair of the Bayside Tenant Advice and Advocacy Service shares his heartfelt views about the withdrawal of funding to their service
The Government’s recent decision to close down Tenant Advice and Advocacy (TAAS) programs across Queensland is cruel in its blatant disregard for the disadvantaged. As chair of one of the management committees (Bayside TAAS) I can only infer from what has happened that the Government is incompetent in identifying where cuts should be made or wants to direct resources away from the disadvantaged. How else would they decide a self-funding; frontline; and community managed service (by volunteers!) be discontinued. Continue reading
Scrimping and saving or taxing tenants?
Minister Flegg has just announced he’s on the lookout for parcel of land in Logan where his department can develop 200 units of housing at a multimillion dollar pricetag. As a public private partnership and with a view to achieving mixed communities, only a proportion of the units will end up as social housing.
According to the Minister, it’s the ‘scrimping and saving’ that’s made the project possible, including the ‘contraversial axing of a tenants advisory service’, and freed up money for the government to contribute.
Scrimping and saving?? Given that tenant advice funding is derived mainly from tenant bond interest, isn’t it more like an additional tax on tenants, an appropriation of their bond interest at the expense of the only direct benefit they get from it – tenant advice services?
These monies are simply not the government’s to save or scrimp. Continue reading
Lessons from New South Wales
In the late 1980s the then New South Wales government cut funding to tenant advice service in that state. Inevitably the services were refunded some time later but not without the loss of experienced workers and corporate knowledge. Let’s not repeat that history in Queensland. Robert Mowbray of the Older Person’s Tenants Services NSW fills us in. 
There is light at the end of the tunnel
Tenants’ advice and advocacy services in New South Wales go back to 1910 when the NSW Rent Payers Association operated an advisory service for inner Sydney tenants. They were first fully funded across New South Wales from 1 January 1986 after successful lobbying by community organisations coordinated by the Tenants Union of NSW.
However, between 1989 and 1994 they were defunded1, despite these being the first five years of reform legislation in New South Wales. These were the dark years. Continue reading
Qld Treasurer misses the point about TAAS services
The Tenant Advice and Advocacy Service (TAAS) in West End was featured on the ABC TV’s 7.30 Queensland on Friday August 10 as part of a review of government cuts affecting the Queensland community services sector. View it here.
TAAS worker Joe Hurley highlighted how the program assists people to remain in private rental market housing, reducing demand for social housing. Coverage also showed the reach of the TAAS program to many people on low incomes living in marginal housing.
In a follow up interview, the Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls discussed the withdrawal of funding to the TAAS program. He stated that the vast majority of advice is provided by the Residential Tenancies Authority (RTA) which supplies three times as much advice as the combined efforts of all the smaller groups (meaning the TUQ and local tenant advice services). See the interview here.
There are two key inaccuracies in what the Treasurer has said that need to be corrected. Continue reading